Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, aircraft without a human pilot aboard. Some drones are controlled by a remote control of a pilot on the ground, while others fly autonomously. Long range drones typically fly autonomously outside of the range possible for remote controls. In order to navigate to a specific destination, drones can receive location signals (e.g., GPS, cell towers, or access points) and use an onboard computer to determine a current position based on the signal using triangulation or other techniques. Current location, trajectory, and destination locations can all be taken into account for making steering adjustments.
However, these unmanned flights are vulnerable to attack by rogue location signals. For example, GPS is an open system that can be with known signatures that can faked in a spurious signal injected with bad location information. As a result, drones can be misdirected.
What is needed is a robust technique for securing UAV navigation by detecting rogue location signals. The solution can quarantine UAVs that have been compromised.